It is a biological phenomenon that all animals hate or mildly dislike change for better or worse.

As I tell my son, how can you hate something you've never tried? Try truly embracing "The Flow"... without going to shame or looking over your shoulders to see if there is a predator or applause. Letting go is harder than loving.

In my experience with addiction, the unholy Legion of Shame, Fear, Hunger & Pain, to name a few, can be as potent as Heroin or Cocaine. Addiction of most kinds is bred in childhood where parents knit these hungry aches into a child's retreating spirit.

Some hate the stitches & some secretly or openly kiss the Ring to these diabolical thoughts, spoken from neurons hoping for the End. I asked my X if her voices/thoughts were as loud as mine. She said, "What voices?" My screaming ephemeral thoughts foretold we would be divorced in a year. They were right. I've learned to trust these voices like “don't marry her” (ignored).

Feeling inauthentic is vastly different than being inauthentic. Mastery over positive thinking & getting "high on life" begins with feeling like an imposter & ends in reticent Joy. I’m only 66.6% at best through recovery. Beth Harmon in Queen’s Gambit did it in less than 2 hours. In real life, it’s a bloody metaphorical nose to the grindstone called my Ego for scores or more for me.

I ask myself, what is the true & authentic me? My demons whisper with their haunting voice,

"I am. We are change ergo ever new."

Shame or fear plays the blame game only 1 way till even cells perish. Whitman wrote, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. Going toward the light can be an incredibly uncomfortable, itchy, nauseating feeling. The more I tumble down 1 rock bottom after another, I realized it is my perspective of myself that was my biggest stumbling block. The vantage point was all wrong for more than 50 years. And that view and vantage of myself were taught by my parents that my ego is tied to others with bigger egos. It was killing me to let my family & friends be my Super Ego doling out belonging on one hand and shaming on the other.

I want the positivity of an Auschwitz survivor or Korean comfort girls below Jap soldiers in WWII. Even God provides shoulders for addicts to rest their burdens. Even a child's small belly can remind the worst of me of my kindness still durable with each childish beat beside my son. For a moment shame was an illusion or hallucination beside him. Nothing to be ashamed about. Now, that’s fiction as long as there are judgy people.